Erased - 2016

I was recommended this show by my younger daughter. She knows I love a good anime, and she had more than a few to recommend.

The protagonist of our story has a rare ability to go back in time to stop a tragedy. In his case, Satoru relives the moment before disaster and looks for what's wrong. It's a lot of pressure, and it's mind-boggling how he figures anything out before it happens. I'd miss all the signs for sure.

One day, his mother comes to visit, and that's when things go south. Eventually, he has a major "revival" that sends him back to his childhood. When he was young, three children were abducted and killed. Satoru always felt guilty, and now he has the chance to remedy the mistakes he knows he'll make.

Ok, so I'm not great at explaining things, but that's because I'm trying not to give too much away. I had to binge the last three episodes, because I wanted to know what happened. From the small amount of research I did, it seems the end of the anime deviated from the manga quite a bit. Since I haven't read it (yet), that didn't affect my enjoyment.

And I did enjoy this one. It reminded me of Death Note and Monster, because I felt a sense of suspense of how things would end up. Also, the resolution of story during/after the credits was like Death Note. I will admit the show isn't perfect. I liked it a lot, though, and it made me want to read the manga. It was 12 episodes in which I was never bored, and I'd happily watch it again. Good Show!

Golden Ninja (The Golden Bat) - 1966

I saw the picture for this one on Tubi, and I was in! Then I read the summary, and I couldn't wait to watch it!

A kid is watching the planet Icarus approaching Earth at a fast pace. The locals don't believe anything is wrong, so the kid is abducted by a secret UN group that investigates unusual happenings. They have a plan to blow up the planet, but they need a special mineral to make the lens for their laser. Their first recon group dies on an island that is somehow part of Atlantis. An enemy appears and pushes them back into a cave where they find Golden Ninja (Bat). He needs some water to revive, and then he's ready to laugh maniacally and whap people with Silver Baton.

I loved this movie. For some reason, I had a blast. I loved the noise Silver Baton made, I loved the weird bat, and I loved all the miniatures used for the sets. I also loved Nazo, the villain. He looked like he was wearing a Snuggie with piggy ears. He never moved, but his little platform spun around. I appreciated his boxing ring microphone that would drop from the ceiling when he wanted to make an announcement.

The movie is actually called The Golden Bat, which makes more sense than Golden Ninja in this case. Apparently, this is a real superhero that was created before Superman! In the 1920s, Japan made this cackling skull mummy, and there's tons of content for him! Manga, anime, movies...I'm going down the rabbit hole with this one. I love Golden Bat.

Watch it with friends that love a good superhero/cheesy movie. I think you'll be impressed. If you aren't, I just don't know what to tell you. This is one of my favorites, and I keep going around the house making "wapsssht!" noises. Good Movie!

Sound of Horror - 1966

I won't say who picked this one, but let's just say it was a cold choice. Just reading the summary made us press play.

A group of "archaeologists" (one brought his niece) are exploring the cave with dynamite and pickaxes. They make sure to let the girl know that she needs to get used to things like explosions, smoke and dead bodies. When they discover a weird egg, they take it back to the house. In the cave, there was a second egg that hatched. Now a ghastly, eerie, evil monster is on the loose. And it's noisy!

This movie was nuts. People were so stupid, they all deserved to die. Two people ended up sacrificing themselves for the rest of the idiots, and they still almost didn't make it out. And how hard is it to make sure your car works?

Calliope gets the award for the dumbest person. She rambled on and on about the evil spirit/ghost/monster, and then she purposely wandered outside to get water - for coffee - twice!

I'm using a lot of different descriptors to talk about the thing. These were just some of the terms used in the closed captions to help us imagine the monster, because we never really saw it. That's right, it was invisible! That made the attack scenes kind of funny, but when you don't know what you're dealing with, it just made it weird. Also, Asilov was all in on the treasure until the bodies piled up. One or two was nothing, but then when he finally wanted to leave, he was all in on that. And what was the deal with the shepherds?!

Just no. I will give an RIP to Dorman. But he did make it so the few survivors had to walk back.

Scared to Death - 1947

Mom found this movie and saw that it had Bela in it. We were both excited at that! On closer look, George Zucco was in it as well. He's another one of our favorites,

Laura is dead. Through a series of 1,000 flashbacks, we discover she's afraid of her husband and his father. She feels they're trying to scare her (to death!), and she just goes around all day nagging at them. Little does she realize, another force is actually responsible.

The first thing that struck me about this movie was the strange flashbacks. They went in and out with that high-pitched ethereal noise. Then it would focus on the dead woman, she'd say a sentence (I'm not kidding) and then it would ethereal back to the action. And it happened a lot. The weird thing was, it wasn't valuable information. She'd say something like, "And then they arrived," and that's it. Then you watched the people arrive...

Bela and George were cousins, and they were innocent. That's right, all the nagging Laura was doing was to the wrong people! Even her husband had nothing to do with harassing her! It was the husband she'd turned over to the Nazis during the war. She thought he was dead, and he wanted revenge. Bela knew about it, but he made the guy promise not to touch her.

I don't think this movie was that great. I was rooting for the Green Man, and I was glad when he finally got some closure. Especially after I heard what she'd done to him. The rest of the movie was just listening to her whine, seeing Green Mask man and listening to the gangster reporter. Yes, this movie has a weird reporter who just shows up and stays at the house while all this is going down.

This isn't the worst movie I've seen, but it wasn't that great, either. I'll stay on the fence with this one.